Careful study of the Book of Mormon's vocabulary and grammar suggests that seeming errors aren't errors at all. In fact, they may provide striking evidence that the book's translation in the 19th century was truly miraculous.

Seeming “errors in grammar and diction,” particularly in the earliest manuscripts and first printed edition of the English Book of Mormon, have provided merriment for mocking critics since at least 1830.

Recent scholarly study of the book’s textual history, however, suggests that such derisive criticism is fundamentally misguided. Indeed, it may even demonstrate that, here as elsewhere, apparently “weak things” can “become strong” for those who believe (see Ether 12:27).

The pioneering research of Royal Skousen, a professor of English language and linguistics at Brigham Young University, for example, extending now over nearly three decades, provides arresting evidence that significant portions of the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon derive from the 1500s and the 1600s, and not, as one might expect, from the 1800s. Further, his latest studies have refined those dates even more exactly, showing that the vocabulary and meanings of many words in the text date from the 1540s up to about 1740. To put it another way, some Book of Mormon vocabulary reflects a period not only prior to the birth of Joseph Smith but also prior to the publication of the King James Bible in 1611.

Carmack shows that much of what has been dismissed as incorrect in the language of the Book of Mormon isn’t actually wrong. To the contrary (while considering dozens of such “obvious” grammatical “howlers” as “in them days,” “I had smote” versus “I had smitten” and “they was yet wroth”), he maintains that the book’s language is “excellent and even sophisticated.”

It simply isn’t the Modern English that we typically use today.

And this, for my present purposes, is the crucial point: “It’s important and helpful to bear in mind,” Carmack writes, “that the original Book of Mormon language is, generally speaking, only nonstandard from our standpoint, centuries after the Elizabethan era, which appears to be the epicenter of the book’s syntax.”

Now, think about that statement. Let it sink in, because its implications are stunning.

Carmack argues that, especially when the textual “corrections” of the past nearly two centuries have been stripped away — emendations and “improvements” intended to bring the published Book of Mormon into conformity with modern standards of usage — the grammar found in the book offers extensive evidence of its Early Modern English character. The original English Book of Mormon is, he says, “in large part” an Early Modern English text, “even reaching back in time to the transition period” from late Middle English into Early Modern English. “The correspondences are plentiful and plain.”

Popular Comments

Help me out here LDS folks because I’m confused as to what Dr. Peterson is
trying to prove.

Alexis de Tocqueville, in his tour of America as
preparation for writing his classic Democracy in America, noted that America was
a country
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9:42 a.m. Aug. 21, 2014

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coltakashi

Richland, WA

What this means is that Joseph Smith was not the person who composed the
"English" of the Book of Mormon, but he was reading text to his scribes,
which he saw. The actual composer(s) of the "English" text were speakers
of English
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9:41 a.m. Aug. 21, 2014

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Lledrav

West Jordan, UT

Joseph isn't the author. Neither is any other man. The Lord provided the
text to Joseph.

We have a mistaken tradition in the church that
Joseph was the translator when in fact he was given the text via revelation.
This is in
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